


Fall of the Seraphs

by orphan_account



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Biblical Allusions (Abrahamic Religions), F/F, Fluff and Angst, Immortality, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mixes elements from both the film and comics published at the time, Multi, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Temporary Character Death, not beta read but in this house we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:27:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25290880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Do you dream?”The question’s abrupt. Random and something that Andy finds unexpected as Nile asks it.“Do I dream about what?” She asks.“You know,” Nile starts, watching Andy’s lithe and graceful movements as she reaches out and plucks another cake from the box, “do you ever dream about the day you died?”***Set a few months after the events of the film and the first volume of the comics. Nile is doing her best to fit in with the newly found group of immortals. Sure, she misses the things she's been forced to leave behind, but she has a new family that heals the hole in her heart. Though it doesn't help to chase away the dreams that she experiences, the dreams about the day she died and was born anew. It isn't long before those same dreams start to occur with a frequency that frightens her, changes to show her an immortal man whose clock ran out, and a woman drowning for centuries beneath the sea. Changes to a tower that reaches the heaven and white-robed figures in her dream that seem to be aware of her. But they're just dreams? Right? Unfortunately for Nile and the rest of the immortal crew, they'll soon find out that some dreams shouldn't be ignored.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache the Scythian/Quynh | Noriko, Andy |Andromache the Scythian/Lykon (past/background), Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 17
Kudos: 107





	1. All Stories Have a Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for this fandom and tries to meld together the first volume of the comics with what happens in the film. Some slight differences of course are that Andy doesn't lose her immortality as she does at the ending of the film (can't guarantee she'll keep it forever in this fic tho). 
> 
> And of course, we'll dive into the backstories of the characters a lot more than the films or comics does. Because I had a lot of questions that I really wanted answers to that lead me to create this fic (like what happened in Malta?).

“Do you dream?”

The question’s abrupt. Random and something that Andy finds unexpected as Nile asks it. 

Half a year. That’s how long since Nile had her throat slashed on the blood-soaked and war-scarred fields of Afghanistan. Half a year since the day she woke up in a medical tent, reborn anew as an immortal when she should have died, her corpse shipped back home to her grieving family as the country she served mourned her with the honor that was befitting one of their fallen. Instead, she’d been gripped tightly and pulled into this strange world, where a ragtag group of individuals had cracked open her mind. Exposed her to secrets that shouldn’t have been true, relayed to her years of history and knowledge that they’d amassed over the years while becoming something akin to a family to her.

They’d found themselves in the capital city of Cayenne, in French Guiana. Hunting down an African warlord who’d slipped through the fingers of justice and was wanted for not only crimes against his own people, but by the American government as well. Apparently bombing a US embassy on foreign soil didn’t do well for one’s social standing with a powerful foreign government. As Copley had informed them, the American government couldn’t risque sending in a special operatives team to the country; not without causing a diplomatic headache between Washington D.C. and the French Government. So he’d contacted them and that’s how Andy and the rest of the team found themselves in a rather nice hotel on the streets of Remire-Montjoly. 

The balcony windows were wide open, letting in a comfortable breeze as Andy takes the time to glance over at the baby of her ragtag group. “Do I dream about what?” She asks, her gaze focused on the box of artfully prepared countess cakes that Nicky and Joe had returned with after going out onto the streets to procure dinner.

A fond smile had stretched across Nicky’s face as he handed the box to Andy. “I know it’s not baklava,” he’d told her, “but even you won’t be able to guess correctly this time.” He had enrolled Nile into his dangerous game of bets, whilst Joe had playfully chastised the other half of his heart for hazing the new addition to their group in such a manner.

It was all warmth behind those words, Andy knew when it came to Nicky and Joe the two had such a relationship that was unmeasurable—unquantifiable—that it made them dangerous on the battlefield. They didn’t need to speak; didn’t need to glance at each other for either one to just _know_ what it was the other was going to do. What it was that the other needed at the moment. It had made Andy’s throat tighten up briefly, Quynh’s face just briefly popping into her mind as Andy closed her eyes for a brief moment. The chill of Quynh’s cries audible as she was dragged toward the iron maiden, even as Andy struggled against her bonds, screamed until her voice was raw and blood was dripping from her shackled wrists.

When she had opened her eyes, it was to the soft shake of Nile’s head, the playfully smirk just starting to form on her lips as she reached into the pocket of her jeans to pull out her wallet. The countess cakes had tasted of sugar from the isles of the West Indies—specifically, sugar from the canes grown in the plantations of Jamaica. Nile’s mouth had widened in shock as Andy rattled off the ingredients used to produce the delicacy until Nicky had extended a hand out in Nile’s direction.

She grumbled as she pulled out a few bills from her wallet and pressed them into the Italian’s hand.

“You know,” Nile starts, watching Andy’s lithe and graceful movements as she reaches out and plucks another cake from the box, “do you ever dream about the day you died?”

It’s a question that doesn’t surprise the ancient Eurasian warrior. “Sometimes,” she admits truthfully, biting into the small, round cake clutched between her fingers. She chews carefully as if considering her next words, “Not so much anymore, in the first couple of hundred years or so I’d used to dream about it all the time.” She remembers it, the day she died. It’s like a fresh stab wound to the chest, even after it heals, the scar is always there. A constant reminder.

Some nights, she’ll lie asleep and dream about the battlefield she’d died on. The way her ax had felt heavy in her hand, the dirt-smeared blade, the blood that slid down the handle and wetted her fingers and palms. The stench of gore, smoke, and death that lingered in the air as her ax tore through the bodies of her foes, her sisters beside her, teeth bared as vengeance that they had drunk like mother’s milk became their song. 

She’ll never forget it. The sting of betrayal. Sure, Booker had betrayed them in the worse way possible, and it had hurt, but it never compared to the way Andromache of Scythia had felt betrayal for the first time in her life. How she’d found herself in the middle of the battlefield, her sister’s surrounding her, the woman she’d come to view as a mother peering down at her from horseback.

Silver, braided hair flowing around her like some mythical goddess, when she had lifted a single finger, pointed it in Andromache’s direction and ordered her own sister’s to turn against her.

Like Andy, Andromache had refused to go down with a fight, after all, vengeance had been her mother’s milk and now it had become her song. She’d taken down some of her own sisters, enough that the others had stared at her with fear wild in their eyes. The betrayal had stung, especially when Andromache hadn’t noticed the spears piercing through her chest from behind. Enemies of her homeland who had conspired with the woman she’d viewed as a mother. Grown irrational and threatened by her tenacity, strength, and intelligence. Andromache had youth at her backside. Her mother? Only had old age and death in front of hers and death while ever-patient always collected its dues.

Except for Andy.

It seemed death often made exceptions.

“I still dream about _it_ ,” Nile’s voice cuts through centuries of Andy’s thoughts, pulling her back to the present, “about my death.”

Empathy lightens Andy’s eyes, causes her to sit up on the couch she’d immediately claimed once they’d pushed open the hotel room door. “Chin up, kiddo.” Reaching out she brushes her knuckles against Nile’s chin, a small action, but it helps to bridge Nile closer to the nearly 7,000-year-old warrior. “Someday, you won’t ever dream of your death, and the rare times that you do it’ll seem like a distant memory.”

“What are the two of you talking about?”

Both of them turn to see Joe standing in the doorway of one of the two bedrooms of the suite Copley had booked for them. Nicky’s by his side like always, hair tussled and sticking up in a thousand different directions. His eyes are still closed, head pressed against Joe’s shoulder as the other half of his heart rubs his back in small circles.

Never the type to rise early, it always takes Nicky a little while to fully wake up. 

“Coffee?” Andy offers, not quite ignoring Joe’s question but she doesn’t feel like continuing this conversation surrounding their first deaths, she’s already standing up to go put on a fresh pot.

“ _Sì, grazie._ ” Nicky murmurs in her direction in his native tongue.

It isn’t long before the fresh smell of coffee fills the room and Nicky’s a little more alert after getting through a cup and a half of the dark liquid that reminds him of the freshly tilled earth during the planting season.

“ _Nicolo_ ,” Joe calls his better half’s name, tongue weighed down by centuries of love that still with each touch and sound are as fresh as the day both men woke up on the battlefield together and said “enough” to the other. “Remember, Addis Abba?”

Nicky nods, a fond smile causing his lips to curl against the rim of his mug, “1482.” He replies back causing Joe’s smile to widen before he turns to press a kiss against the corner of Nicky’s mouth.

Curled up in her chair, one leg tucked against her stomach, fingers wrapped around her mug Andy can’t help but smile at the mention of the date.

Nile, still so young, still so fresh and unenlightened about the times before her, blinks. Her dark eyes dart from each member of the team, like a child dancing around the skirts of their mother and the other elderly women of their tribe. The last vestiges of youth unshed, not yet privy to the inner workings of adulthood. “What happened in 1482?” She asks.

It causes Joe to laugh softly, “That’s when this glorious little drink,” his fingers tap against his own mug, “was invented. _Nicolo_ and I had stumbled into Addis Abba, lured by the scent of freshly roasted coffee beans and almost never left the city, we were so entranced.”

Resting her chin into her palm, Nile smiles, and finds her thoughts turning to this strange family she’d become a part of. Sometimes when she dreamt of her death, she’d dream of everything she had to leave behind to. Her friends, her family; she dreams of all the birthdays she’ll end up missing or the family dinners she can no longer attend. She dreams of the hopes and future she had envisioned herself achieving once her tour had ended. But like the sands of time, those dreams and aspirations had slipped through her fingers. 

She’d changed. Become something anew on the other bank of the river while everyone else was on the other side. But instead of the painful pangs that she’d usually experience after waking up from her dreams, right now, as she glances around the table she feels those pangs slowly ebbing away.

They may not go away forever, but now at the moment, with this new group that she could call her family, it was enough.

They’d be enough.

And Nile didn’t need any dreams to tell her that.

Heading out later in the day, suited and geared up, it doesn’t take them long to track down the African warlord. Nor does it take them long to dispatch the hired mercenaries that were there to protect him. It’s a good day, all in all, Nile thinks, she only died once on the mission—a well-timed bullet that tore through her aorta—but she considers that to be a good day compared to the others.

They meet Copley in an airstrip under the cover of darkness, deliver him the warlord to load onto a waiting cargo plane so that he can be shipped off back home to face justice from the International Criminal Court. 

“—and there,” Copley remarks, fingers brushing against the screen of his smartphone, “money’s now in your account. I’ll contact you guys if any other missions pop up.”

With that, they return back to the hotel. Nicky cook’s up a feast for a job well done while Joe somehow manages to procure several bottles of well-made rum that has Nile giggling like a young girl after her first glass. They retire for the night; Joe and Nicky in one room and Nile and Andy sharing the other.

It doesn’t take Nile long to feel the hands of sleep slipping over her skin and pulling her under. Good food and alcohol will do that to you, but when she sleeps, she _dreams_. And this time her dreams aren’t about her family and friends that were left behind.

This time she dreams of a man in distant and strange lands, skin darker than her own. He seems...familiar somehow? A familiarity that settles itself into her bones as she dreams of this man riding alongside her through the ages. Civilizations come and go, cities made out of glittering silver and gold rise only to be plundered, taken over, razed to the ground and rebuilt anew. This seems to go one forever as the man takes battle wound after battle wound only to arise as if death’s shackles can’t keep him down. All of that changes, when one thrust of a sword through the chest and he falls down, never to rise again, relief painted across his still and motionless face.

The dream morphs, this time to an Asian woman found amongst the shifting sands of a civilization that’s name has been lost to time. Nile sees her through battle, blood, and carnage; sees her as times shifts and parts like the flow of a river, until the newest immortal sees her being lead to an iron coffin. Sees the coffin being dragged into the sea and the woman screaming as her lungs fill with water and death takes her into its grasp only to release her and the woman’s _drowning_ all over again. Nile doesn’t know how long she spends underneath the water, just knows that time keeps changing; can _feel_ it changing as she spends millennia drowning beneath the sea.

A part of Nile knows that there’s something in this strange set of dreams she should be paying attention to. Like when the teacher cracks open the textbook and tells the class, “anything in here could be on your final exam, so pay attention,” and then pulls up a PowerPoint that you think won’t matter until the day of the exam arrives and you realize the answer had been in your face all this time.

There’s something important in these dreams; an answer to a question that she had been wondering about but never questioned. Something important she should be focusing on but doesn’t yet notice.

Morphing once more, the dreams evolves and changes. Nile tilts her head back, staring up at a great monolith of a structure. The sun shines down upon whitewashed stones, the colosseum-like building extending towards the heavens. She feels a pulling in her gut, turns her head and sees men and women of all shades of colors conversing with one another, figures clad in white robes pull at her attention like beacons. Angelic faces and an oddness to them that causes her skin to prickle, the surface of her skin to begin to bead with sweat. One of the white-robed figures seems to turn as if aware of her presence and it’s like Nile’s whole body rings with fear and understanding twisted together.

With a gasp, Nile’s bolts upright in bed, skin slick with cold sweat and eyes dancing wildly in her head. Her stomach lurches inside of her as if she’s going to be sick. Beside her the bed shifts, Andy sleepily sitting upright and she feels a gentle touch on her bare shoulder.

“You alright?” Andy murmurs, voice still thick with sleep. Concern gently wraps around the question.

“I’m fine,” Nile forces herself to say, though she doesn’t feel like that’s the right answer to the question. “Just had a bad dream, is all.”

Andy’s touch lingers like she doesn’t quite believe Nile, but she takes her word for it. “Get some sleep,” she yawns, falling back against the soft pillows piled on the bed, she curls onto her side.

With a soft sigh, Nile reclines back as well, hands folded over her stomach as she stares up at the dark ceiling and wills herself to fall back asleep. It takes her some time, but tiredness blankets over her, her eyelids becoming heavy as they fall shut. When she finally falls back asleep, she doesn’t dream of the man who seems familiar yet not at the same time. Nor does she dream of the woman trapped beneath the sea. 

She dreams of that tower again. The one that seems to touch the sky and as she dreams, some part of her knows that this is important, but for now, she sleeps and dreams, and when she awakes she’ll forget all about it in the morning.


	2. Dreaming of the Past

“A break.” Those two words trip out of Andy’s mouth so quickly that everyone else in the room had stared at her in surprise. It was three months after their stint in French Guiana and now they found themselves on the outskirts of some southern town in the US dealing with a homegrown terrorist cell that had been enough for Copley to ask them to dismantle. It’d been quick work; an in and out job that resulted in none of the immortals dying. But it had been jobs back to back lately it seemed like.

Andy had just seen Joe yesterday sitting down at the small kitchen table in one of their safehouses, a giant can of ground coffee in one hand and a spoon in the other as he shoveled the granules into his mouth and sipped it down with a mug of hot water. 

They needed a break, Andy had decided. No missions, no jobs for a couple of weeks at least, and a couple of years at most she decided.

“A...break?” Nile’s eyes narrow, her cheeks are puffed out from the forkfuls of chicken biryani she’d been shoveling into her mouth. “Don’t you mean a vacation?”

“No,” Andy tells the young soldier, the corner of her own mouth curling into the ghost of a smile, “a vacation implies that we’ll be away for a long time and well...with our lives time gets a little funky.”

“Well, shouldn’t I be...training or something?” Nile asks, twirling her fork in between her fingers.

The question causes Andy to quirk her brow in the direction of the young shoulder, “You’re saying you want more training?”

“I would think you’d have enough,” Joe chuckles, seating himself beside Nicky, there’s the barest hint of their shoulders brushing together between them, “especially when Andy isn’t very lenient when it comes to training.”

Yea, Nile had bruises, broken bones, and a lung collapse or two during her training sessions with Andy that had made her learn quickly when it came to training with the older immortal that she had to adapt quickly. Otherwise, the other option in the equation was death. The Eurasian warrior was brutal in her training methods, after all the woman had forgotten more ways to kill a man than most armors ever learned in their entire lives. She’d taught Nile martial art moves that no longer existed, art forms of fighting that had been lost to the sands of time. So when Andy declares that a break is needed? Yea, maybe Nile is going to agree on this one.

“So?” Andy arches her right brow, placing her spoon back into her bowl that contains her half-eaten meal.

“A vacation would be nice…” A smile widens on Nile’s face. They spend the night brainstorming up vacation plans, Nicky and Joe of course wanted to revisit Malta.

“We made a plan to go back, after all,” taking Joe’s hand into his own, Nicky lightly squeezes it. 

It turns out Andy had plans to visit Kazakstan and Mongolia. The two regions were where she had spent much of her youth before turning immortal and she had fond memories of the area before adding. “Mongols make the best food.”

“Do you think I can tag along?” Nile asked her, despite her deployment to Afghanistan she hadn’t really ever made a trip out of the US until after her rebirth. She had gone on a trip to Mexico City in high school for her Spanish class, but that had been it.

“The more, the merrier,” Andy had told her with a soft shrug of her shoulders. “Get some sleep everyone, our break begins tomorrow.”

  
  


“Ah,” Joe sighs as he sinks backward onto the bed, despite being 954 years old, a 15-hour plane ride always wiped him out. “ _ Nicolo _ ,” he makes a grabby motion at the other half of his heart as Nicky heads toward the balcony doors of their Tigné point apartment. It’s a historical building, built during the 1800s, the building had been renovated and refurbished over the centuries to bring it to a modern standing. Joe and Nicky had fallen in love with the building and its blend of antiquity and modernism. 

Joe ever the jokester had pointed out to Nicky that the building was “much like them.” Something antique yet painted over with modern attributes. They’d bought the apartment under false identities in the 1980s.

“ _ Nicolo _ ,” Joe whines, it’s playfully by the way Nicky laughs, even as he pushes open the balcony doors to let in some fresh air to the apartment. “Come here. Join me in bed.”

Glancing in Joe’s direction, Nicky knows that he won’t deny his lover. As much as the rational parts of his brain scream for him and Joe to clean their dusty apartment, to throw out the sheets that are 40 years old and buy new ones. He knows Joe is going to point out to them that they’re on break and that a break means for the two of them to lie down in bed together until they’re inevitably kissing, clothes being thrown off of their bodies that become flushed and consumed with passion and both of them lying sweaty and spent in bed until one of them gets up to order in the other’s favorite food.

Wordlessly, Nicky lets his bare feet lead him to the bed. Joe’s smile widens as Nicky collapses down beside him. “Ah,” Joe sighs, rolling onto his side to peer into Nicky’s eyes, even after all these years, Italian rolls off of his tongue as smoothly as if it had been his first language, “ _ remember the last time we were in Malta _ ?”

_ “Which time?” _ Nicky asks though he knows which time Joe is referring to.

“ _ Nicolo _ ,” Joe warns with a teasing smirk.

_ “Yusuf _ ,” Nicky counters with a brief slip into Arabic. Both men smile at the other as they remember what happened in Malta in what seemed like a lifetime ago. Though like all stories, this time in Malta that both of them remembered fondly began before either had ever set foot on the land and began in that battlefield during the crusades when Joe and Nicky had crossed paths.

**1099**

The sun’s just rising over the horizon, casting golden rays over the land that seem to seep into the stones battlements that protected the edges of Jerusalem. Back in those days, Joe had been called Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, his closest friends had affectionately referred to him as al-Tayyib.

He rises from the carefully rises from the rolled out mat, his Salat al-fajr prayer finished, he can hear the distant pounding of hooves and cries of the Christian army approaching the defensive walls of the outer edges of Jerusalem that was the only thing keeping the army from invading and claiming the city as their own. Carefully rolling up the mat, Yusuf props it up against a wall before climbing up the battlement and standing upon the stone wall. He squints, dust clambering upon the horizon as he measures how long it’ll take the Christian army to reach the wall upon horseback.

By his estimates, it’ll be 15 minutes at most. 30 minutes at best if they were carrying a battering ram with them, which knowing the Christians they would be. He turns, ordering the archers to notch their arrows in their bow and to put their faith firmly in Allah that they’ll come out of this battle victorious so they may return to their loved ones. Yusuf’s hand rests against the warm stone of the tower to his right. “ _ Hold! _ ” Yusuf calls out to the archers who wait on the battlements with him as the army grows closer. “ _ Hold! _ ” He can see the frontline of the army as it approaches closer. A dark-haired warrior with locks the color of potter before it goes into the kiln points his sword at the battlements and roars an incomprehensible order at his men.

Thoughts of home suddenly plague Yusuf, makes him think of the warm spices that clung to his mother’s skin. The laugh of his father and his elder sisters teasing him about the time he has left to get married to the pretty bride that their father had already found for him. He misses the sea, his boat full of wares for him to sell upon reaching the market; he misses the feeling of paints and oils gliding across a smooth canvas. His heart swells with a loneliness that he quickly stamps down as the army comes within a few meters of the wall and Yusuf points his finger at them and orders the archers to shoot.

Down upon the battlefield, Nicolo as Nicky was known in those days is invigorated as the army approaches the outskirts of the holy city. Jerusalem, the promised land that he had tossed aside his holy robes and picked up a sword for. He can already feel the prickle of tears from the corner of his eyes as he envisions laying them upon the exterior of the Holy Sepulchre. It had felt like a calling from God himself to pick up a sword and reclaim the lost holy city for Christian’s young and old alike.

When Nicolo had joined the church, his father had nearly wept with joy, his mother of course had been upset as he was the only son she had out of 5 children. But she knew he was following the path God had laid out for him as he steeled himself to face down these devils who worshiped false idols. A shadow befalls the front lines, forcing Nicolo to glance up and raise his shield just in time as the volley of arrows rain down upon the front line. He can hear the thick gurgle of a soldier beside him who had been too slow and took an arrow to the neck. His throat rapidly filling with blood as he slumps and falls off his horse to be trampled by the others. Nicolo orders his men to focus on ramming down the walls of the battlement.

If they breach the walls they have clear access to the city and that’s all they need. The battering ram moves forward as the men beneath it are protected by the thick wall of wood covering over their head and the soldiers flanked on either side of them. Rushing toward the wall, they charge at it, stones come tumbling loose as the archers force their feet to be steady upon the mountain of stacked stones. Another hit of the battering ram and more come loose as Yusuf orders the archers to send another wave of arrows down upon their enemies. Nicolo raises his shield when he sees the arrows come loose, but his horse isn’t so lucky as an arrow pierces through the flesh of its neck, causing its legs to buckle beneath it and sending Nicolo tumbling down to the ground.

Freeing himself from the stirrups, he watches as the battering ram strikes the wall once more. The wall buckles outwards as the wall crumbles and Yusuf finds himself sliding down with the sun-soaked material. The men holding the battering ram drop it upon the desert sands as they and the archers engage in a fierce battle, except Yusuf is glaring at Nicolo, the two men seem only aware of the other upon the battlefield that quickly becomes awash with blood and corpses.

A guttural shout tumbles past Yusuf’s lips as he rushes forward, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword and withdrawing it from its sheath. Rushing toward Nicolo, he makes a broad slash, slicing through layers of thin fabric, chain mail, flesh, and muscle that has blood flying away from the Italian man’s body and sprays across the sand that’s now more red than beige. Nicolo staggers, his guts spilling out as the warm trickle of blood flows down his skin and soaks into the fabric of his tunic.

_ I refuse to meet God without taking one of these heathens down _ . Is all Nicolo finds himself thinking as he draws his own sword, grips it tightly between both hands, and yells as he spears Yusuf through with the tip of it. Staggering backward, Yusuf blinks with shock as he falls onto his back, Nicolo falling face-first into the sands; both men’s eyes slip shut, their consciousness fading as they feel the life slip from their bodies.

The first thing Nicolo sees is a beautiful woman with strong features and dark brown hair. She’s adorned in armor and looks every bit like an angel rendered onto glass within the church Nicolo had preached at. He wonders for a brief moment if this is God’s messenger come to bring him home? Before the woman’s face disappears and he dreams of a man, skin as dark as freshly tilled Earth, with an easy smile that fights alongside the woman as if they were lovers and something more. It shifts again to green fields of rice and stalks of wheat, an Asian woman sleeps within a cave, a warm fire burning lowly as rain trickles from the heavens.

It changes again and Nicolo wonders if God is trying to test him when he envisions the heathen he had just stabbed, dark eyes twinkling with hate and anger as he slashed through Nicolo’s stomach.

It’s nightfall when Nicolo rises. At first, he thinks he’s made it to heaven but realizes that’s not the case. That he might as well be in hell when he hears the cry of carrion birds above him, his fingers twitch as he curls them into a fist and forces himself up onto his knees. The scent of blood is overwhelming, the scent of death hanging in the air is even worse and it’s then that Nicolo realizes,  _ I’m alive _ . His body aches in a way as if one had overexerted their muscles, like when he had spent hours in the field, helping his father prepare for the planting season, and not like he’d just been in the midst of war.

Hand flying to his stomach, his gloves trace over smooth flesh with trembling fingers. His mind races. Had God blessed him? Kept him alive to see another day? His thoughts are disrupted by a groan beside him, he glances to his left and finds the devil he had just killed hours ago rising as well. His chest smooth and whole where Nicolo had known that he had stabbed him.

_ No _ , Nicolo thinks to himself. If God had been his protector then the devil must have been this heathenless man. Yusuf thinks the same as he notices the Christian fighter staring at him. His fingers twitch as they fly to the handle of the knife he keeps strapped to his side. Nicolo lets out a roar as he launches himself at Yusuf on the still and quiet battlefield; the army had left the dead men upon the field and moved on. Pulling out his knife as Nicolo pushes Yusuf down onto the ground, his arms wrapped around his waist, Yusuf shouts in the name of his God and stabs the knife down into Nicolo’s back.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nicolo spies a large rock. He grabs it and bashes Yusuf’s head in with it until the rock is smeared with blood and bits of flesh. He collapses beside Yusuf and when they wake in the morning they repeat this deadly foreplay all over again. Morning and night they try and fail to kill each other, each time both men arising anew as if nothing had happened. As if either God or the devil had been playing some sick trick and denying both men the quiet release of death.

It must have been the third night when Nicolo lay tired in the blood-drenched sand. Yusuf had shaken his head, tossed aside his knife and sword, and glanced at Nicolo and had spoken in halting Italian. “ _ Enough. I grow tired of this, friend _ .”

Nicolo wasn’t tired enough to spit back a seething retort. “ _ Do not call me your friend, you godless heathen. This must be the work of your devils for us to remain alive and slip through death’s fingers so easily _ .”

Yusuf merely blinks at him, shakes his head as if Nicolo has yet to realize something and grabs for his weapons which seems to make Nicolo tense, his fingers twitching as they grow closer to the hilt of his sword. “ _ I will not draw my weapons against you, Allah permitting you will not do the same against me either _ .” The man assures him as he sheats his sword and knife.

_ “What are you? _ ” Nicolo asks him, peridot colored eyes narrowing beneath the moonlight as Yusuf glances at him.

“ _ I could ask you the same question _ .” He huffs, releasing a quick puff of breath from his nose as he leans down, offering a hand out to the Italian who stares at it with some distrust before slipping his own into Yusuf’s palm and allowing himself to be pulled up.  _ “But I’m sure we will discover the answer to this question together, my friend _ .”

And indeed they did. It took them years to cast aside their differences, to cast aside the ideologies they’d been taught to view each other with hatred only to uncover that there weren’t too many differences between them as the world around them aged and changed and they didn’t. It took years before Nicolo and Yusuf’s feelings toward one another began to shift into an idle friendship to one of something more; to something that was full of love despite the internal conflict that threatened to wage war within Nicolo. Of years of indoctrinated ideology that taught him a man must not lie with another man.

But in 1104, that fateful night on the outskirts of Verona, Yusuf’s lips had brushed against his. The taste of wine and the sticky peaches he had snacked on earlier lingered on Nicolo’s lips with a tingle. Eyes wide as he thought to himself  _ if God knew the beauty of the man before him, the way his smile seemed to light up the world around him, the way his eyes twinkled with light whenever Nicolo regaled him with stories of his life before dying on that battlefield and coming back as a new man. Would he have written in the bible that it was wrong for another man to want to lie with another? _

He hadn’t lingered on the thought before he leaned in to capture Yusuf’s lips in a searing kiss that would be a first of many more to come.

The first time the two had ever gone to Malta, it had been in 1105. They’d been entangled in one of their many conversations about the opposing religious doctrines and beliefs they had grown up with when Yusuf had proposed a thought that had made both men cease their discussion for the night to think.

_ “Would it not be good,” _ Yusuf proposes to Nicolo in his native tongue of Arabic, he goes slowly so Nicolo can understand him, understand the jumble of syllables and smooth rolls of sounds that the Italian still sometimes has trouble comprehending. “ _ If our people could live in a land, side by side together?” _

Of course, they hadn’t realized that the country of Malta had been the answer they had been seeking. Muslims and Christians living side by side. It had been paradise upon earth. Like God had come down and sliced a little corner of Eden off, molded his hand against it, and made it Malta.

Nicolo and Yusuf had found a little house to hunker down in on the edge of the city near the water. Using his past experience as a trader, Yusuf had found easy work as a bookkeeper for a trader who had his hand in many business ventures, but due to his failing eyes needed someone who knew arithmetic as good as a scholar. Nicolo found work as an artist’s apprentice; their home was a small, brick cottage with only one room but they made it work. It was awkward, or at least in Nicolo’s opinion, it was. They had laid lips on each other countless times, more so when Nicolo had a glass of wine or several in him, his cheeks painted the color of roses and mind foggy from the taste of liquor.

They had been in Malta a month, both men weary from a day’s of work when Nicolo walked into the cottage, face reddened by an evening of drinking when he spies Yusuf cooking. It’s a rare sight to see for his eyes, Nicolo was so used to cooking for his family in a life that seemed like a distant memory. He had fond recollections of following his mother around the kitchen by her skirts, tasting everything, smelling it, letting it be a part of him as he learned how to season meats, learned the best way to make pasta from scratch.

Cooking was his first love and it would always be his last. But seeing Yusuf fluttering around the kitchen as easily as if it was a sand-strewn battlefield, made Nicolo’s heart flutter.

The thick smell of powerful spices and roasting meat lured Nicolo to step further into the kitchen. His mouth-watering as Yusuf turned, surprised coloring his face as Nicolo closed the distance between them and captured his mouth with his own.

There’s a sharp laugh shared between them. One that’s quickly silenced by warm tongues caressing the inside of each other’s mouths, fingers quickly dancing across skin in a hurried pattern to free them of their clothes.

_ “Nicolo _ ,” Yusuf moans, his name sounding like music in Yusuf’s mother tongue.

They had made love that night. Their first of many, in a city where religions lived alongside each other without a concern in the world. They had called Malta their home for 20 beautiful years until they had left it when questions about their youthful looks had reached their ears. Malta may have changed, but both men knew that it would always be their home.

  
  


In the present, Nicky’s laying in the bed of their apartment, his right ear pressed against Joe’s chest. The deep thump of his lover’s heartbeat relaxes is body with an ease he hadn’t felt since the last time they had a proper moment to allow himself to be carefree. “Allah,” Joe sighs, more to himself than to Nicky, “we should have come back to Malta earlier than we did.”

“We should have,” Nicky agrees, feeling his eyes drift shut as he loses himself in the sound of Joe’s heartbeat. Glancing up, he sees the love shimmering in Joe’s eyes, sees the desire there that hasn’t faded despite all these years together. “We have to clean,” he warns Joe, trying to curb the desire that growls in their veins.

“We  _ don’t _ have to,” wrapping an arm around Nicky’s waist he keeps him trapped against his side. “Remember Nicky, this is a vacation. The sheets, the dirt, the cleaning can wait until later.” Pressing a kiss against Nicky’s lips, he pulls back as a whine works itself into the Italian’s throat.

“I’m pretty certain we have moths in the closet.” Joe presses a kiss against his jaw. “The sheets have been eaten through.” Joe’s mouth moves lower, warm lips pressing themselves against the side of his neck. The spot that makes his brain sluggish and difficult to form a thought. His lips curl into a smile, knowing Joe’s doing such a thing on purpose. “We don’t even have food in the fridge.”

“We can order something.” Joe sighs, letting his hand that sears into Nicky’s waist, slide down so that it cups the curve of his ass.

Nicky blows out a sigh as if the mere suggestion of ordering in food rather than cooking in is a personal affront to God and the angels in Heaven.

“We’ll order out from that place you love a few blocks away.”

“That place that makes amazing shawarmas?” Nicky asks, right brow curved as he pulls his head back slightly to smile at Joe.

“Yes,” Joe nods his head, “not stop talking and kiss me already.”

Nicky leans in, captures his lover’s mouth with his own. Their bodies pressed flush together, his hand on the small of Joe’s back, Joe’s hand slipping down to lift his leg, providing just a little bit more room for them to slot their bodies together.

Their touches are slow and languid. Not like the hurried ones they’ve had in the past, where they’re pressed for time, minutes away from leaving out for a mission. Nicky sighs as Joe’s teeth, gingerly nibble on his lower lip, pulling on the flesh before releasing it from between his teeth. His fingers dance against the hem of Joe’s jeans, digits blindly undoing the button and pulling down the zipper so that he can slip his hand inside of Joe’s boxers.

A grunt rumbles past Joe’s lips as he pressed his forehead into the crook of Nicky’s neck, lets his own hand move between them, and mirrors Nicky’s action. A soft sigh leaves the Italian’s lips as Joe’s warm hand wraps around him. Their fingers are slick with precum, cock heads twitching as Nicky and Joe lazily bring each other to an orchestra of pleasure.

“ _ Nicolo _ ,” Joe babbles in Arabic, toes curling as Nicky speeds up the pace at which his hand brings Joe pleasure. His name on Joe’s tongue is music to his ears as Nicky pulls his hand away, causing Joe’s eyes to snap open, shock, and confusion dancing in two halves of amber.

He watches, question burning in his eyes as Nicky grasps his hips and flips him onto his back. That question dies with a choked moan as Joe watches the other half of his heart take his cock into his mouth. “Oh,  _ Nicolo! _ ” Joe cries out, a moan trapped in the hollow of his throat, “ _ you’re so good to me _ .”

Nicky swirls his tongue around the soft head of Joe’s cock, feels it twitch in his mouth as he swallows down the length, the head tickling the back of his throat as he swallows around it.

Joe’s fingers grip his hair tightly. Fingers tugging at his locks, pulling on his scalp in a way that makes tears prickle in the corner of his eyes. Throwing his head back, Joe lets his release spill into Nicky’s mouth with a cry and a curse that’s halfway between a mixture of a broken Italian and Arabic.

Joe sighs, content, arousal a lingering afterthought in his body. “Nicky, come here.” His fingers brush against his lover’s jaw, grab at his shoulders as Nicky climbs up Joe’s body and hovers above his chest.

Swallowing his lover down, Nicky throws his head back, moans falling from his lips like ill forgotten prayers as Joe sucks him with abandon as if this the first time they’re doing this all over again. Nicky cums with the name of catholic saints on his lips and a well-satisfied sigh as Joe pulls off of him with a filthy slurping sound that makes Nicky’s cock twitch and his brain hazily wanting to go at it again.

“Food?” Joe suggests with a smile, leaning up to kiss his lover, their mouths burned with the aftertaste of each other’s essence.

“We change the bedsheets first, then a shower, and then food.” Nicky’s cruel smile is enough to make Joe wonder where he’d be without him.

“Fine,” Joe chuckles, swatting Nicky’s ass with his hand, “but you’re joining me to conserve water.”

The look on Nicky’s face makes both of them laugh. Like neither one would be alone for long for the other was to follow.

Little did they know their blissful time in Malta would only last for three weeks.

The world just seemed to love throwing problems their immortal way.


	3. It's a Mad World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the dialogue has been taken from issue 4 of Force Multiplied. It's been changed to fit with the flow of the story.

Three weeks.

That’s all it seems to take before the world collectively decided to give Andy and her little band of merry immortals the middle finger. Or well, a cannon made of middle fingers.

Either way, the world decided to eat shit and spit it out before Andy’s feat. But she’s getting ahead of herself, needs to rewind the story back a bit.

Mongolia. Lovely Mongolia. The land where everything is hearty and rich and the food is delicious enough that you won’t notice you’re packing on pounds unless you stop moving.

Andy has a cup of salted milk tea in her hand, Nile stretched out across the couch of their hotel room taking a nap.

It was the end of their Mongolian trip before they moved on, Andy was thinking about heading west to Kazakhstan. Showing Nile around some of the cities and towns she’d stayed in hundreds of years ago that hadn’t changed or hardly had. Her eyes flicker to the couch when she hears a soft groan, the type of groan you’d get when your brain decided to grab the wheel, push its foot on the gas and race down the road for nightmares.

She knew what that was like when she found Nile squirming on the couch, fingers twitching to grasp at anything. She entertains the thought of getting up to wake the youngest member of her group up but is stopped when Nile bolts up from the couch, eyes as round as teacups in her head. Beads of sweat curve down her forehead, a wild, dazed look possesses her as she utters words that make Andy want to curse some God she doesn’t believe in.

“Booker’s been kidnapped.”

“Ok,” Andy pinches the bridge of her nose, “so tell me again how you dreamed about Booker being kidnapped?”

They’re already been over this a dozen times so far, the sun’s just starting to come up above the horizon. Painting the sky in streaks of soft pink and red-oranges. “I told you,” Nile’s shoulder slump with a sigh, “I saw Booker, wrapped up in chains and being lowered into the water. It was cold and dark, and then—” she trails off.

And then he died. Over and over again, beneath the water, feeling his life slip out of him. She’s had Nile go over this dream if they even can call it that, so many times that it’s as if she herself had dreamed about Booker and not Nile.

“Ok,” Andy pinches at her nose bridge again. “Let’s say that this wasn’t a dream—”

“Andy!” Nile’s tone is clipped and short, growl on the tip of her tongue as she shoots the Eurasian warrior a glare. “I know what I saw; know what I felt. It was all 100% real.”

She can see Andy’s face morph between wanting to believe her and wanting to think that is all something that can easily be explained away. None of them had ever had this happen to them before. They’d always had dreams about freshly born immortals, not ones that were in the process of dying only to come back again.

It was strange. It was new. It was completely foreign territory for both of them.

“Fine,” Andy huffs. “We take the next flight out that we can. Go to Booker’s apartment and if he’s fine—” she shrugs her shoulders.

If he’s fine, they can leave him in the rest of the hundred-year exile they had condemned him to.

“Fine,” Nile nods. “I’ll go call Nicky and Joe.”

It’s easy to say that none of them were too keen on cutting their break short. Joe wasn’t too keen on the fact that the reason they had cut their break short was that Booker may or may not have been in trouble. At least none of them say that when they get to Booker’s apartment, climb up the steps and see the front door is wide open and off of its hinges as if a gorilla or broad-shouldered men had forced their way through the thick wooden door.

“Holy shit,” Nile gasps under her breath as they step into the apartment, find overturned furniture, and a large, dried bloodstain on the kitchen tiles.

As much as they all had tense feelings towards Booker right now, Andy’s stomach flips with unease as she continues to stare at the dried stain on the tiles. It’s brown and flakey in spots that make her wrench her eyes away from it. “Booker’s in trouble,” the words leave a hollow feeling in her gut.

Back in the hotel room, they rented in the city. Nile is hunched over, her arms wrapped around her knees as Joe hangs up on the hour-long phone call he had spent with Copley.

Joe takes one sweeping look at Nile before settling on Andy. “He says he’ll do a search, see if anything strange comes up that may be connected to Booker or whoever took him.”

Yea, whoever took him. Andy thought to herself bitterly, whoever took Book was going to end up eating the bullets from her gun.

She’s antsy sitting around all day waiting to hear news from Copley about anything he found. So when the phone rings near midnight, she hops to her feet and stabs her thumb against the screen of the smartphone after having to be shown by Joe once again how to accept a call on these new devices. Her heart pangs as she misses Booker who would constantly joke about how Andy was dangerous with every weapon known to man but couldn’t keep up with changing technology like smartphones.

“I found the two men who took Booker.” Copley’s voice rumbles in her ear. “Russians. They took Booker to a shipyard, maybe keeping him in a shipping container. From satellite photos, it seems they’ve had a lot of extra hands guarding a particular one. I’ll send you the details later.”

They were going to get Booker back.

After Copley sends them the details, Andy orders them all to gear up. They’d go under the cover of night. She wanted Nicky on sniper duty, Joe and Nile would back her up.

The shipyard is about a couple hours of driving to get there so they head out as quickly as they can. Nicky runs off, rifle in his hand as he heads for a tower of metal that leads up to a crane. Andy motions for Nile and Joe to follow her as they head into the shipyard, hear the silent whizz of bullets as Nicky takes out a guard with an automatic rifle who had their back turned to them.

They make quick work of the guards, reaching the red shipping container where Booker is supposedly being held. She motions to Joe and Nile with her fingers. Holds up three of them, motions to the shipping container. She counts down with her fingers. 3...2...1.

The shipping container doors are thrown open, a shotgun blast to the chest has Andy flying backward.

An Asian woman with long black hair, tied into a ponytail steps out of the container. In the corner of Nile’s vision, Joe’s skin is as pale as a sheet of paper. He looks like he’s seen a ghost, the muzzle of his gun lowering slightly so it’s not pointing at the woman’s chest anymore. “Merciful Allah,” Nile hears him whisper, “Quynh is that you?”

“Miss me, Andromache?” Quynh cruelly smiles as Andy gurgles from the shotgun pellets that have torn through her chest. Eyes wide with a shock that’s misted by the barest hint of fury.

“Quynh?” Flecks of blood dribble from her lip, her body crumples like a stack of playing cards that have been knocked over. The life bleeds out of Andy as she takes one rattling breath.

Quynh turns her shotgun on Joe, smiles at him with that sickly, sweet smile of hers. “Yusuf! Look at you, you haven’t aged a day!” She pulls the trigger of the shotgun, the blast sends him flying back, his gun slipping from his fingers at the sudden attack.

“Holy fuck!” Nile shouts, her gun still pointed at Quynh’s chest. Attempting to shoot Quynh, the Asian woman dodges the blast, her gun arcing in the air as she points the muzzle of it at Nile’s leg.

“You’re the new one!” She coos, like a child who’s caught an insect for the first time. She pulls the trigger, blowing a hole through Nile’s leg that has her falling to the ground.

“Motherfucker!” Nile howls.

A shot rings out in the air, a well-timed bullet from Nicky that tears through Quynh’s head, spraying brain matter, bone, and blood everywhere.

Seconds pass by and Andy and Quynh come back with sharp gasps of breath. Hopping to their feet they glare at each other as if no one else is there.

“You’re alive!?” Andy growls out in disbelief.

“Always have been.” Quynh’s cruel smile seems to widen on her smooth face, “but I’ve been drowning for these past 500 or so years. Sorry if I couldn’t send you a postcard.” She moves quickly, whipping out a katana that had been sheathed at her side. She brings the blade down upon Andy who quickly pulls out her axe to block the blow.

“I looked for you!” Andy cries out, parrying the blow away as Quynh delivers a swift kick to her stomach that knocks the air out of her.

“You should have looked harder!” Quynh spins on her heels, slashes at Andy again and this time gets her. The blade sliced through cloth and flesh, a large gash left behind on Andy’s arm.

“100 years!” Andy growls as she blocks another blow, Quynh’s Cheshire grin sending tingles of warmth in her stomach that compete alongside her anger. “I spent 100 years searching for you.”

“You didn’t look long enough!” Quynh growls, turning on her heels, she launches herself up the top of the shipping container. Andy gives chase after her. “You gave up! I wouldn’t have!”

The accusation causes Andy to flinch as her feet come down roughly on top of the container. “I thought you were dead!” She hisses. She had spent so long holding out hope, holding out on the fact that Quynh could have been alive somewhere, Joe and Nicky had forced her to come to her senses. Had pointed out after the first 30 years that they had scoured every corner of the known ocean. Quynh was nowhere to be found. If she wasn’t found then...well, she’d never be found even with all of the advancement in seafaring technology.

There’s an emotion that flickers across Quynh’s face. Something like sadness and pain mixed loosely together. “ _I_ thought you were dead.” Quynh swings her sword at Andy’s neck. Andy swings her axe back. Blood spurts out of both of their wounds as their lifeless bodies crumble against the sheet metal.

They come to life again. Quynh still swinging her sword as she growls out, “It’s so nice to see you living life while I drowned for centuries!”

“Damnit!” Andy growls, dodging blow after blow. “Quynh, please let’s just talk!”

“Oh of course!” Quynh growls, being driven back by Andy’s centuries of swordsmanship, but she can hold her own. After all, she was a damn pit viper. “Let’s catch up. Why don’t we?” She swings her sword in an arc. “How. Have. You. Been? Oh. Fine. Just. Drowned. For. Centuries. Over. And. Over. Again—” Each one of her words is punctuated by a movement of her sword, a block from Andy as doubt flickers in her face for a brief second. Andy jumps back from the swing of Quynh’s sword. “— _Abandoned_. By. She. Who. _Promised_. We’d. Be. _Together_. For. Ever!”

Andy turns, launches herself up to another shipping container as Quynh gives chase after her. Her cruel smile still plastered to her face as she asks. “How about you, baby?”

“Quynh, please stop!” Andy lifts her axe at her side, blocking Quynh’s slash that would have torn through the meat of her ribs. “I tried to find you!”

“You abandoned me!” Quynh hisses, spittle flying from her mouth as she presses closer. “Just like you did to Booker!”

The name is enough to cause Andy to hesitate; to misstep as Quynh’s sword curves through the air and embeds itself into her neck in a well-placed move. From his vantage point, Nicky fires out another shot, this time aimed for Quynh’s heart. She stops moving, both of them collapsing onto the shipping container.

When Andy wakes up, the sky is dark and Quynh is nowhere to be found. Her neck still stings from where Quynh’s sword cut through it. “Shit!” She curses. “Fucking shit!”

They’re standing by the shoreline hours later. Dressed in fresh clothes as Andy stands on the rocky shore, looking out into the distance as if it holds all the answers. Cigarette smoke curls away from her lips as Nicky and Nile hang back by the van they’d rented under a false name.

“Give her some time,” Nicky tells the newest addition of their group. “She needs it.”

Joe goes to be by Andy’s side. He says nothing as she takes a drag from the cigarette held between her fingers. “She’s got Booker, Joe.” She taps ash away from the end. “She said I _abandoned_ him like I did her.” The waves crash against the rock, spraying saltwater in the air. “I have to talk to her, explain things right. I’ve got to figure out why she’s so damn angry with me.”

“How are we going to find her?” Joe asks.

“We’re not,” Andy takes one last drag from the cigarette before tossing it away, “she’ll find us.”

It’s nighttime when they find her, or more accurately, Nile is inside of a bar getting hit on by a cute guy that has a gentlemanly suffer look going on for him that wouldn’t ever be anywhere close to her usual type. She leaves with him, notices the black sedan parked in front of the bar with window tints that are nowhere near legal. She sees Andy step out of the shadows from the corner of her eyes, but ignores it and follows her fun for the night.

Quynh steps out of the car. Hears the click of boots against the asphalt. “Quynh, let’s talk.”

They walk to a nearby park. Andy has her hands stuffed into the pockets of her coat. “I don’t even know where to begin, Quynh.” 

“How about ‘I’m sorry for leaving you to drown’?” She huffs, watching Andy pull a carton of cigarettes out of her pocket. She has a look on her face like the joke was in ill taste. “No? Too on the nose, I guess.”

She pulls a lighter out of her pocket, flicks it, and lets the end of the cigarette burn a little before pulling a drag into her mouth. Blowing the smoke out, she watches it curl and disappear into the air. “You ever drowned, Andy?” She says after some time. “In all the years you’ve been alive, you ever experienced that particular...demise?”

Andy shakes her head. She’s died a million and one ways, but drowning has never been one of them.

“Oh,” Quynh laughs, a pale reflection of the same woman Andy had fallen in love with so many years ago. “You might think burning is worse. The fire tearing through your skin, eating through your flesh until you’re nothing but a poorly done roast.” She pauses, takes a drag from her cigarette as the two of them keep walking. “Drowning,” she taps the ash off of the cigarette, “is much more... _excruciating_.” She glances at Andy. “Do you want to know how many times I died in that water?”

“Too many times.” Andy answers.

“Once was too many,” Quynh hisses, bitterness laced into her voice, “I spent years beneath the sea, drowning over and over. Once was too many.”

“We thought you were dead.” Andy points out, face crestfallen. “Joe. Nicky. I—we thought you were dead. I _prayed_ that you were dead.”

“Did you?” Quynh takes one glance at Andy before hopping up onto an unoccupied bench. She looks down on Andy like some disregarded god. “Did you pray, Andromache?” She takes a drag from her cigarette before flicking it away. “ _Sincerely_? With all of that heart pounding in your chest?”

They stare at each other. Two similar beings lost in two different worlds.

“Hoped,” Andy’s mouth works itself into a frown, “I should’ve said hoped.”

Quynh laughs like this is some great big joke to her. She climbs up to the top of the bench, balances across the wood in her heeled boots. “That’s dangerous, Andromache. Hope is even more dangerous than faith.” She holds her arms out like she’s walking the tightrope between life and death. “At your age, you should know better.” She gives Andy a pitiful look. She swings her arms out as if gesturing to the whole world before her rather than the expanse of the small park they’re in. “It’s all _hopeless_.”

With a sigh, Andy puts a cigarette between her own lips, sits down on the bench as Quynh sits on the top. “It isn’t hopeless,” she argues, “it can’t all be.” 

They both say nothing. Watch a young mom push her colicky baby in a stroller to calm it down so it can sleep. A lone jogger runs in front of them, music blasting from his headphones.

“Is that what you’ve deluded yourself in believing all these years, my love?” Quynh smiles sardonically, not missing a beat in their conversation. It’s as if she’s never left. As if she doesn’t hold some misplaced anger toward Andy for what some old, misguided fools who hid behind the twisted words of their religion had done to her. “Is that what you told yourself over and over?” A pair of teens stumble their way through the park, their voices a little loud this late at night. “You know I’m right, Andromache. You’re _older_ than I am, but you can see it more clearly. What have _they_ accomplished that can give you any dregs of hope?”

Andy counts all the reasons off on her fingers, a bitter smile worming its way across her face. Quynh had been so full of light and hope. She had changed. “Medicine, technology, education, _sanitation_? Remember the Black Death?” Quynh smiles at the memory. “At least now there’s no one shouting at us to look out before they throw their piss and shit onto the street. I mean hell, Quynh, they invented sports bras!”

“And these?” Quynh gestures to the cigarette in Andy’s hand. “Do you remember when tobacco was rare? When it was considered as holy as opium used to be?” That bitter look is back on her face. “Now, it’s mass-produced. Killing millions each year with their pretty little packaging.”

“Yea, but more people know it’s harm now than they did back in the last two centuries.”

“Sure,” Quynh shrugs her shoulders, “but what stopped those companies from rebranding? Making new products like E-cigarettes or vapes, with new enticing flavors that draw in the younger generation? Draw in teens with candy flavors while touting themselves as being healthier than all the drawbacks of cigarettes only for it to be a lie? Nothing’s changed, Andromache. The world just got smarter at lying.”

Pushing herself off of the bench, Quynh walks away, Andy gets up and follows her. “I figured it out, Andromache. While I was dying for centuries, I figured it out.” She glances at the Eurasian warrior. “I achieved clarity. I achieved _enlightenment_ .” There’s an old-timey tune blasting from one of the cars that drive by. The music fades as the car becomes a tiny blob in the distance. “I was being _punished_.” The look on Andy’s face makes her laugh. It’s bitter, crazed in a way that makes Andy think she too would have gone crazy beneath the ocean. “And it was punishment. Make no mistake about that.” She whirls around to stare at Andy. “Just like you’ve been punished, Andromache. All the losses, the loneliness, the heartbreak, the betrayal?” She cocks her brow at Andy.

The two continue walking. “It’s the price of sin,” Quynh says after some time. “The price of your sin and mine.”

“What sin?” Andy’s throat is tight. Memories forced up to the surface that she had pushed to the back of her mind.

Quynh brings her hands together as if in prayer. “ _Hubris_.”

Andy stops, mouth agape as she glances down at her feet. Cigarette nearly burned down to a stub, she tosses it away. “I never claimed to be an angel.” She growls, her words razor sharp around the edges.

“Yes,” Quynh leans forward, close enough that they could kiss if they closed the gap, “but you also refused to be the devil.” She reaches out, presses a hand to Andy’s cheek that sears the skin more than it soothes. “That’s who we are at the end of the day, my heart.” She gestures to the few people in the park. The mother with the colicky baby had long left. “We’re not made to _help_ them. We’re made to hurt them. Our _purpose_ is to make them suffer.”

  
  


In a bar, James Copley nurses his drink. Rum and coke; it’s simple, old as time itself. A dash of strong rum and a dash of coke. He pounds the drink down, signals the bartender for another as two figures seat themselves on either side of him. The one to his left orders a Planter’s punch, the one on his right orders a strawberry and lime Moscato punch.

“She’s not like you guys, you know.” The bartender puts his rum and coke down in front of him, he grips it, watches the ice swirl around in the dark liquid. “I didn’t get her name at first. Not a real one at least, but she’s not like you guys. She doesn’t _help_ , she only _hurts_.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Quynh we used to know,” Joe grumbles, fingers pressed against the glass of his drink. “Not the Quynh Andy knew either.”

“People change.” Nicky sounds bitter as he sips on his drink. “We’ve seen it all the time.”

“Drugs, weapons, trafficking,” Copley huffs, “she has ties to criminal organizations around the world. I don’t know if that counts as changing or...something else.”

“She wouldn’t do those things,” Joe argues. Vision obscured by the pale reflection of a woman they had fought with; a woman who had bled for them; died for them and seen the good in people even as she was being dragged to an iron coffin and condemned to death.”

“But it explains,” Nicky’s voice is soft as if he’s trying to soothe Joe’s anger with words alone, “why she has an interest in us. How she _found_ us.”

“She has Booker.” The words make Joe and Nicky’s spines stiffen. “I know where.” Copley turns to see Joe’s pointed gaze leveled at him.

“Show us.”

  
  


“You think I’m wrong,” Quynh scoffs as Andy walks her back to her car. 

“Yes,” Andy confirms, the streetlights casting shadows across her face. She knows Quynh enough to be able to tell she’s frustrated by the way she wrinkles her nose and sets the edge of her mouth into a scowl. “I think you’re wrong.”

“I’m _not_ ,” Quynh argues pointedly. A street trolley passes them by, a couple of passengers seated in the carriage. “This should be a golden age, ushered in on the wings of science and technology. Yet you have a dark age, an era where it’s easy enough to spread fear and ignorance. Just one click and you can have an account online, say that someone wronged you, _leered_ at you the wrong way and their lives are destroyed in a matter of seconds. Doesn’t matter if it’s clearly all lies, doesn’t matter if there’s no proof to these accusations. The wolves will eat you up and not even bat an eye at your mutilated corpse.” They pass by a storefront, Andy peers inside, sees antique books and a small cafe tucked off to one side. 

“We’ve both seen it before, Andromache.” Quynh sighs as they round the corner back to the bar. “Face it, my love, things change; things don’t stay the same. But we’re not like them, we never were.” She whirls around, faces Andy, hands held wide as that crazed look burns in her eyes. “They’re _vermin_ ,” she spits, “which makes us the exterminators.”

“No,” shock is laced into Andy’s words as she stares at the woman she used to love. She still loves, but now this woman is changed. Become something she couldn’t understand. Quynh was right to an extent; the world and Quynh had changed yet she was stuck in the past. 

“This isn’t a choice, Andromache.” She points a thumb at herself, “this is who we are. Deny it and you’ll only suffer as I have.”

Andy stares at her shoes. A deep well of sadness filling up inside of her. “I’m sorry for what happened to you Quynh. I’m truly sorry. I wish I could go back and change it but I can’t.” She reaches out, presses a hand to Quynh’s cheek and leans in to kiss her on the lips. “I wish I could be happy that you’re here before me.” Andy whispers in her ear, “but the woman I fell in love with died beneath the sea.”

She walks away. Quynh’s voice broken and raw with anger as she calls out after her. “Don’t you dare walk away from me, Andromache!”

“There’s nothing more to say,” Andy tosses over her shoulder. She hears the unmistakable sound of a car door being opened.

“I see,” Quynh hisses behind her back, voice laced with a dangerous serpentine quality to it, “you’re right, my love—” Andy turns, doesn’t have time to react as the tip of a blade slashes clean through her neck. Her eyes sting with hurt, hand flying to stop the flow of blood that spills over her and onto the ground. She looks up, Quynh’s face framed by a halo of blinking stars. “—I guess I just have to show you instead.”

  
  


Sun shines through the windows as Nile blinks herself awake. Glances at the long blond hair that had been tangled between her fingers last night as a face disappeared between her legs. Quietly, she slips out of bed, picks up clothes that had been thrown off in a haste. She slips on her underwear, puts on her bra, and grabs up her pants, shirt, jacket, and boots as she slips out of the bedroom. Softly shutting the door behind her. She’s outside tossing her jacket on when her phone chimes from her pocket. She fishes it out and sees Joe has texted her. Two more come in rapid succession.

_Nicky and I r getting Booker back._

She smiles, Joe’s age juxtaposed with his ability to text like a modern young adult.

 _Tried reaching Andy. No answer_. 

Nile feels her mouth slip into a frown as she reads the second text. It wasn’t like Andy to not get back in touch with any of them.

 _U know where she is_?

Nile doesn’t. She’s typing Joe back a reply when she hears a voice call out. “It’s Nile, right?”

She whips her head in the direction of the voice. Whole body tense as she spots Quynh leaning against a jet black jeep. She holds up a single hand as if that’s going to placate Nile after their first introduction was to shoot her in the leg.

Granted Nile was trying to shoot her too and wouldn’t have missed if Quynh didn’t have hundreds of years of experience against her military training.

“Relax,” Quynh tells her. “Look, I know we got on the wrong foot the last time we met.”

“You mean when you shot me in my leg?” Nile bites back.

Quynh gives her a little shrug of her shoulders as if to say _it’s water underneath the bridge_. “I’m Quynh.”

“Oh, I _know_ who you are.”

A smile slips across Quynh’s face. A weighted look like a viper sensing whether to take the time to strike or wait for its prey to settle into a false sense of comfort. “Do you really?” She asks. “Do you really know who I am?”

Nile says nothing, balls her hands into fists as Quynh continues. “Andromache sent me to get you.”

“Where is she?” Nile narrows her eyes, not trusting this woman as far as she could throw her.

A dangerous smile makes Quynh’s lips curve. “Andromache’s busy.” Is all she tells the young immortal.

On the edges of the city, in the ocean that surrounds it. A car has been driven into the cold depths of the water. Bubbles rise up from the trunk. They disappear for a short moment. Only to reappear again. The same pattern occurs over and over. 

It’s a modern coffin.

One that Andromache finds herself trapped in...


	4. 60 Seconds

60 seconds that's how long it takes her to drown. 60 seconds is all Andy has. It takes about sixty seconds—to drown with a lungful of water. In the dark, disoriented, that's not a lot of time—

Her lungs burn. Blood streams past her in the inky black darkness of the water.

—it's not a lot of time to save yourse—lf. Add in the time it takes to heal from your wounds, especially as an immortal, especially from whatever wounds someone else gave you and put you in this situation—in the first place and if you're an immortal well…

You’re going to find yourself locked in a perpetual cycle—a cycle of Andy won’t be able to escape unless she keeps her shit together—

Her lungs burn. She  _ wants _ to breathe but can’t. She opens her mouth, more water fills her lungs and she feels her consciousness slip from her. Her body goes still as life leaves her. She’s back again bubbles of air streaming from her lips.

She needs to keep her shit together. Long enough that she can do something about it. But that’s fucking hard when you’re perpetually dy—ing. She doesn’t even know where she is for starters. Her feet kicked out, the muffled ring of leather boots hitting metal reached her ears.

Right. Trunk of a car. She keeps kicking, it took her who knows how long to figure this shit out and the exertion—

She gasps. Bubbles stop streaming from her mouth. Seconds tick by until she’s resuming kicking the trunk of the car.

—the exertion’s tiring her out. So that 60 seconds? Now that’s all bullshit since she’s burning through oxygen like it’s vodka. 60 seconds? She’s lucky if she even has 30. She pushes herself to the seam of the opening of the trunk. It’s sealed up tight. She can feel her limbs weakening. Feels the life go out from her. She’s back again. Quynh was clever, yet never cruel. It seemed time had changed her. It was just enough to kill Andy now. 

Despite all of this, it seemed Quynh hadn’t quite caught up with modern times. Andy stops struggling. Life escapes her. She’s back again. If Quynh had been caught up she’d know that since 2002 all cars had to have a glow in the dark trunk release lever.

Andy stops struggling. The water is still before bubbles resume streaming out of her mouth once more. All Andy needed to do was keep it together. She pushes her way over to the release lever, all she needed to way pull it. Keep it together long enough that she could get out; hopefully, she wasn’t too deep in the water. She can feel her body weaken, her thoughts jumbling together.

She’s back, lever grasped between her teeth as she yanks it hard enough that the trunk slowly pops open. She dies before she even breaches the water. When she comes to she’s on the rocky shore, seagulls pecking at her flesh. A large gasp of air forces them to fly away, startled by the fact that she isn’t a corpse.

Andy turns, puking up the seawater that had filled her lungs. Collapsing on to her back, she sighs, lifts up the two bloody nubs where her hands are supposed to be before Quynh cut them off.

Tears caress her cheeks. For a moment she thinks its the water dripping down her face, but she flicks her tongue out, tastes the saltiness of her own tears on her tongue. Light from the sun shines down upon her. She reaches up, brushes her tears away with her own fingers, and gets up, walks away into the distance.

There’s no pain quite like a broken heart.

  
  


“I think we both know,” Quynh hisses as Nile faces her down. Nile’s fingers twitch, moving to the back of her jeans where she has a gun shoved down the hem of her pants. “That’s unlikely to work Miss Freeman.”

Nile wraps her fingers around the grip of the gun anyway. “It sure as shit will slow you down though. And I think I like those odds a little better.”

Quynh sighs holds her hands up in front of her. “I really think we got off on the wrong foot. That was my fault. I apologize.”

Nile doesn’t let her words deter her. “From what I’ve seen your  _ apology _ isn’t worth much.” She hisses, thinks about Joe taking a shotgun blast to the chest. Thinks about how Andy took much worse than that.

“What you’ve seen?” Quynh crooks a brow at her like this is some wider joke that Nile hasn’t fully grasped yet. “Or what you’ve heard?” She lets her hands drop to her sides. “Because I can  _ promise _ you, whatever Andy—whatever the others—have told you about me...it’s  _ nothing _ compared to what they’ve neglected to tell you about themselves.”

She feels her spine go rigid, betraying her attempts to put on a cool facade. “What the hell does that mean?” Nile spits. She hates the way Quynh smiles as if she’s successfully lured her into a trap.

The street wakes up. People coming out of their homes to get in their cars to go to work. A young family of three rushes out, their child wearing a small backpack as they usher off to head to work and daycare. Quynh gestures to all of it. “Are you sure you want to have that chat here? In a place so public? It’d be awfully foolish if you were to gun me down; public places never do well with murders.” Her grin widens. “Your one night stand might see us and I wouldn’t want him to get the wrong impression.” Nile’s eyes flicker up to the window, there’s no movement inside. She glances back at Quynh.

The Asian woman moves to the passenger side door of her jeep, her fingers curl around the handle.

“I’m not going  _ anywhere _ with you,” Nile hisses, eyes dark as she glares at Quynh with the fury of a thousand suns. “You have something you want to say, you say it here and to my face. Otherwise, I’ve got places I need to be.”

“You’re just full of surprises aren’t you?” Quynh chuckles, pulling her hand away from the car door. “Very well, young one. When you see Andromache, ask her about this. Ask her about  _ Law 282 _ .”

“Law…” Nile’s mouth falls slightly open as Quynh rounds the car.

“..282,” she replies back with a smirk, pulls the driver side door open. “Andromache will know what I’m talking about. See you soon, Miss Freeman.”

Nile watches her drive away.

  
  


“They’re keeping Booker on a boat?” Nicky glances at Copley, adjusts the heavy bag on his back.

“They’re keeping Booker on  _ her _ boat,” Copley corrects him as he and the two immortals walk down the quiet dock.

“Let me guess,” Joe remarks dryly, “that one’s hers.” He jerks his chin toward a yacht in the distance, bobbing lonesomely in the middle of the sea. “For a woman who spent centuries drowning, she seems unreasonably fascinated by water. You think she’d pick a better hideout.”

“That’s probably  _ why _ , Joe.” Nicky hums, taking a pair of binoculars that Copley is offering him.

“She what!?” Copley blinks at both of them.

“We lost her,” Joe explains, “during the witch hunts in England. Condemned to an iron coffin, she apparently spent much of the intervening time drowning over and over.”

“ _ Jesus Christ _ ,” Copley whispers more so to himself.

Nicky offers some sagely words of advice, “Suffering in the past like she did doesn’t give her the right to torment someone else in the future. What can you tell us?” He offers Joe the binocular’s in his hands.

Joe looks into them, notices three men standing aboard the ship.

“It’s an ‘88 Domino Super,” Copley tells them. “It technically only needs a crew of two but can easily hold up to 20. It’s a safe bet that she has at least that many aboard, armed and ready.”

“Where’d she get the men?” Nicky asks.

“If it’s global and it’s shady, you bet Quynh has her hand connected with it. I thought I made this clear, organized crime has been multinational for decades now. She has the money, she has the contacts. She can pick and choose whoever she wants. There’ll be no shortage of muscle aboard that ship. So how do you want to do this?”

Nicky and Joe glance at each other, dual smiles worming their way across their faces. “Fancy a swim, Nicky?”

  
  


Getting back to the room they booked. Nile throws it open, sees waterlogged clothes scattered across the floor. There’s a gun on top of the clothes, Nile bends down and picks it up, water pours out of the muzzle making it useless. She finds Andy’s phone, the screen cracked beyond recognition.

“You’re back,” Andy remarks, coming into the room dripping wet and as naked as a Grecian goddess. “Have a good night?” She towels off her dripping wet hair as Nile glances up at her.

“Yea...it was good. Did you go swimming or something?”

Andy’s mouth curves slightly, “or something,” she remarks, heading to her suitcase to pull out some clothes to wear. “Where’s Nicky and Joe?”

“They met with Copley. He found out where Booker is.” Nile leans against the dresser, peers at Andy as if she’s going to get some explanation for her dripping wet clothes and damaged phone. “They were trying to reach you. They’ve gone to get him.”

Andy pulls on her boots, laces them up. “Where?”

  
  


“This should cover it for a day,” the man standing before Copley tells him. A pen glides across the surface of the contract clipped into place on a clipboard. “Got to have it back by six tonight, though.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Copley tells him, handing over the contract and a thick wad of cash.

As the man counts it, he glances at Nicky and Joe loading up numerous bags into the boat. “That’s...uh...a lot of gear you boys got there.” He remarks. “You boys going after sturgeon or bass?”

“Something bigger,” Joe huffs, turning to help Nicky up into the boat.

“Don’t even think of going out there without me!” Andy shouts, running down the dock with Nile trying to keep up with her.

“We tried to reach you, boss.” Nicky tells her, watching her chest rise and fall as she takes in deep lungfuls of air. She hands her bag to Joe, takes the one that Nile offers her, and gives it to Nicky.

“Nile. Andy.” Copley nods his head in greeting at the two women. “Thanks for letting me help you.”

Andy says nothing for a moment, reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Figure we all deserve a second chance.” She turns and steps up into the boat. “So let’s go give Booker his.”

Copley mans the wheel, pulls out of the dock as they all strip and get into their gear. They pull up close to the yacht, they notice two guards standing on the deck. “Ahoy there!” Copley calls out, the two men startle. The one wearing a hideous blue and black pinstripe suit reaches into his inner pocket and pulls out a pistol. The other wearing a charcoal gray suit pulls out a semi-automatic rifle. “I say. Ahoy there!” Copley waves to the two men. “That’s such a lovely yacht! A Domino Super is it? What is she--”

“—sir,” the man in the blue and black pinstripe suit calls down to him, “this is a private vessel.”

“Oh, well of course she’s  _ private _ .” Copley remarks back takes a brief glance back to see Nicky press himself against the edges of the boat. Shotgun pointed upward into the air. “I didn’t imagine she would be publicly owned.”

“Sir,” the man repeats again, annoyance burned into his words. “This is a  _ private _ vessel. I must ask you to pull away at once.”

Near the edge of the yacht, Andy, Nile, and Joe’s heads breach the water. Their bodies dripping wet as they climb up the steps. Andy, taking the lead holds up her hand, curls it into a fist, and uses a single index finger to motion at a man standing with his back to the steps. He’s wearing a brown suit.

“Otherwise,” they hear the man giving Copley orders to pull away from the boat, “I will have no choice but to consider your actions hostile and have my crew respond accordingly. This is your last warning—” Andy signals for them to move. She whips out her axe, they notice another man with a ponytail near the back.

“What the—” he reaches for his uzi. He’s quick; quick enough to pull the trigger and riddle Nile’s body with bullets. “—fuck! Intruders!”

The two men on the starboard of the ship hear their comrades bloody gurgle. Nicky leans around the side of the boat, shoots out a single shot that hits the charcoal grey-suited man square in the chest. The other takes his pistol and aims it at Nicky as Copley guns the engine of the boat, quickly turns the wheel so that it’s tipped to one side as Nicky quickly moves, balances himself and throws himself onto the yacht. The man in the two-toned suit is a terrible aim, Nicky realizes as he hits extremities that just cause him to grunt with annoyance. He walks up to him and points the muzzle of his shotgun at the man’s chest. “Sorry,” he mutters, pulls the trigger, and watches the man fall over the railing and into the ocean.

Joe, Nicky, and Nile make quick work of the men aboard. “Joe!” Andy yells out, tosses him a gun from the hand of someone she chopped off. 

“Put down your weapons!” A group of ten men, maybe 15 at most all point their guns at Andy. Joe and Nile throw their backs against the side of the ship, leaving Andy standing in the middle, her eyes pointed to the wooden deck, her axe strapped to her back. “Now!”

Andy sighs. It’s an annoyed and tired sound. She grips the handle of her axe, pulls it out. “No.” They don’t even stand a chance when they pull their trigger at once. Andy’s already inside the yacht’s lounge. She slices through a man’s neck, throws her axe in the air, grabs one guy’s hand and twists it so the muzzle of his own gun is pointed at his neck. She pulls the trigger, moves again and catches her axe midair, shoves the handle of it into a guy’s mouth so hard that he swallows his own teeth before she swings the axe again and brings it down on his neck.

“Jesus Christ, Andy,” Nile mutters, taking in the mini army of bodies that Andy has just wiped out. 

Andy whirls around dripping with blood, hair streaked with what Nile thinks is brain matter. “What?” She spits. “You wanted me to give them a spanking and send them off to bed without supper?”

“No!” Nile steps back, slightly affronted, slightly...worried. “That’s not what I wanted.”

“Then what is it that you want?”

“Andy!” Nile gestures to the bodies before them. “You took these guys apart like it was nothing...this isn’t...this isn’t like you.”

“Yea?” Andy gives her a bitter look. “Maybe you just don’t know me.” They share a tense stare before Andy speaks up, turns away from her. “Come on, they’ll be holding Booker below—”

“—I’ll spare you the effort of finding him, my love.” Quynh steps out, throws a battered and bruised Booker toward them. He looks like he’s seen better days, his hands are zip-tied together. “He’s all yours.”

“Hey, Boss,” Booker coughs, he spits out a fleck of blood from his mouth. He reaches up toward Andy with his tied hands. “It’s good to see you.”

“Book.” Andy’s eyes soften, she reaches out toward him and pulls him up to his feet.

“ _ Sébastian, es-tu blessé? _ ” Andy asks him in French, “ _ est-ce que tu vas bien? _ ”

He smiles at her. “ _ C’est la guerre, henh? _ ”

“I’m so so sorry, Book.” She presses his face between her hands. Pulls her gaze away from him when Quynh starts to slowly clap. She pushes Booker away to where Nicky pulls out a knife to cut the zip tie off.

“Well, well, if this little reunion isn’t touching.” Quynh smiles at them points the tip of the sword she’s holding down toward the ground. “I used to think that once upon a time, you’d have welcomed me home like that Andromache. Pity, but I somehow doubted that.” 

Nicky hands Booker a shotgun, they keep their weapons pointed on Quynh. “So how do we want to do this?” She smiles at them. “A battle on the deck of my yacht? Old school vs new school? Guns vs blades?” She stares at each of them. “Five vs one?” She hums, “the odds are very much in your favor.” She smiles at Andy, a mixture of sadness and bitter emotions. “I’ll lose.” She swings her sword at Andy, Andy blocks it with the hilt of axe.

Quynh presses close and captures Andy’s lips with her own. Nile’s mouth drops open as she glances at the other immortals, her eyes burning with a  _ what the fuck _ look to them. Quynh reaches up, tangles one of her hands into Andy’s hair Andy’s lips part with a gasp, an opportunity that Quynh exploits. She thrusts her tongue into Andy’s mouth, grips her hair so tight that the Eurasian warrior can feel her scalp tingling.

“Yes,” Quynh breathes with a sigh as she pulls away slightly, she untangles her hand from Andy’s hair. “I’ll lose.” She reaches up and touches her kiss swollen lips. “What then, Andromache? Will you lock me up somewhere for  _ eternity _ ? Dismember me? Scatter my body all across the world? Burn me alive? Toss my ashes to the wind?” That crazed smile is back again. “It might work. After all, there’s a first time for everything.” She gestures to the water surrounding them. “Or is it back into the water for me? Lock me up in another coffin, but this time make sure I can’t get out?” Andy just stares at her. “Another few centuries of torment, my love? Another three or four hundred years of torture?”

“No,” Andy whispers. 

“No?” Quynh laughs, “then what, Andromache? I’m asking you because I truly don’t know. I don’t have the answer but you do.” She points a finger at Andy. “It’s your choice, my love. What are you going to do?”

They stare at each other. Two lone figures on a battlefield of their design. Andy turns away. “No.” She says, voice soft and mixed with tiredness befitting her age. “We’ve got what we came here for.”

She turns away, signals for the rest of them to follow her back to the boat. Nile watches her carefully, watches her when they climb into the boat, and doesn’t even glance when Nicky leans and touches the back of Booker’s hand reassuringly. They’re all back together again. Safe and sound this time.

She watches Andy glance back up at the yacht as they pull away, staring at Quynh until she becomes a dark blur in the distance.

They go back to the hotel room. Piling up in what was supposed to be the room Andy and Nile’s shared. Booker’s wearing clean clothes, his hair freshly cut as Joe and Nicky walk in with pizzas and beer in hand.

“ _ J’ai faim! _ ” Booker exclaims, taking a gander at Andy who hasn’t moved from the position she’s taken up upon the dresser. “Your old friend Quynh barely fed me on that boat.” He gets up quickly takes a slice of pepperoni pizza as Nile goes for a beer.

“Not  _ my _ friend,” she tells him, handing Booker a beer of his own, “I doubt she’s anyone’s friend anymore.”

“Well,” Booker says around his mouthful of dough, cheese, tomato sauce, and oven-baked meat. “Her hospitality left a lot to be desired.” He takes another bite of his pizza. Tips the head of his beer bottle in Nile’s direction. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“Thank James,” Booker swivels his head in Nicky’s direction, the Italian handing a bottle of beer to Copley who sat in the only chair that was tucked into a corner between the bed and the window. “He knew where we could find you.”

Gesturing with his beer, Booker smiles at the man. “Then to your health,  _ Monsieur  _ Copley. May it be good for many years to come.”

“I was just trying to make it right.” Copley brings up his beer to clink it against Booker’s.

Grabbing two slices of pizza, Nile makes her way over to Andy and hands her one. “Thanks, kid.” Andy lifts her pizza and bites into it.

“So,” Nile takes a sip of her beer, “are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

Nile shakes her head. “Oh come on, Andy. Joe and I saw what happened on the yacht. You took those guys out like you were Xena the Warrior Princess.” Her mouth presses into a flat line. “And I have to say it...it looked like you were enjoying it. You’ve been in a shit mood ever since Quynh showed up. Since before it, if I’m being honest. The way you took out the guards at the shipyard? It’s like you’ve got a perpetual mad on or something. Truthfully, I think you owe us an explanation.”

Andy stares at her. Shoves the rest of the pizza into her mouth and hops off of the dresser as she makes her way to the door. “I’m going out—” is all she gets out when Nile calls out.

“What’s Law 282, Andy?”

Andy stiffens, turns her head to face Nile. “What?” Her voice has a dangerous growl to it. Everyone stares at the two of them.

“Quynh was waiting for me this morning. She wanted to have a little chat with me. Told her to go fuck herself, but she told me that you’re not who you seem.” Nile crosses her arms in front of her. “She says there’s shit you haven’t told me. Said I should ask you about Law 282.” She shrugs her shoulders, expression tight as she stares at Andy. “So I’m asking you. What is it?”

“It’s the Code of Hammurabi.” Andy sighs, catching the way Nile’s expression glints over with confusion. “Law 196. An eye for an eye.”

“Oh,” Nile jerks back in understanding. 

“There were 282 laws in total.” She glances down, mutters beneath her breath. “I used to know them all.” The room’s quite. “They weren’t the first  _ laws _ ,” Andy continues, “but they were...they were for Babylonia. It was different back then. Things were different. They’d never had anything like it. The laws were a big deal.”

“What are you trying to say, Andy?” Nile’s expression is tight. “What was Law 282? Why did Quynh feel that was so important for me to ask of you?”

Andy hangs her head. Like this law is some shameful part of her past. “If a slave has said to his master, ‘ _ you are  _ **_not_ ** _ my master,’ _ he shall be brought to account as his slave and his master shall cut off his ear.”

Nile’s mouth flaps open, then closed, and back open again. “Which were you?” She whispers.

“Nile…” Andy starts only to be cut off by the young immortal once more.

“Which were you, Andy?” Andy says nothing. “Which. Were. You. Andy!?”

“It’s the way the world  _ was _ , Nile.” Andy’s brows pinch together. 

“Bullshit!” Nile scoffs, her emotions a jumble inside of her. “It was a crime against humanity. You knew it was wrong; knew it was wrong to enslave others for what? Money? Power? It’s never not been wrong, Andy.”

“Of course I knew!” Andy shouts back, she slaps a hand over her heart, fingers curling in anger. “You think I’m a good guy, kid!? I’m a fucking  _ killer _ . That’s what immortality has cursed me with! It’s given me seven millennia to practice! I’m a goddamn god of war made into flesh! I was born into it. I fought my first battle when I was fourteen. I didn’t have the privilege of staying home, being safe in my mother’s arms, and learning other skills. I was thrust onto the battlefield, made to bleed out some poor man’s life otherwise it’d be my own corpse left behind. Do you want to know what we did after? When we had won?” She narrows her eyes at Nile. “What do you think we did to the prisoners, huh? Did you think we just let them go? Smack them on the ass and say ‘sorry you didn’t get the chance to rape and murder us, but hey no hard feelings about that. Oh also don’t do it again’?

“Should we have executed them? No, we sold them. For things, we didn’t have. For things that would feed our whole village for the winter, for things that would keep our families alive for another day. We sold them like animals, Nile. To us, they had little value compared to our horses. They were worthless. They weren’t people. They weren’t  _ anything _ . That’s the way it was; that’s the way the world worked. It’s the way I grew up and lived in and it’s still how I’m living in.” She turns away from Nile, turns her back to all of them. “But everyone knows better now. But this shit goes on anyway. Even  _ now _ , even  _ today _ . And you want to know why Nile? Do you want to know why it’s gone from being called slavery to human trafficking? Because people are shit. At best they’re apathetic, mostly selfish and evil. They change the name, consider it a new problem because they can’t be half-assed to see that it never stopped. People are  _ vermin _ ...and so am I.”

Nile just stares at her. Mouth open wide in shock. She shakes her head as if she can’t believe it. Shakes it again and then she’s moving around the room like a bat out of hell, grabbing up her wallet and coat.

“Nile, where are you going?” Nicky takes a step toward her, only to be held back by Joe’s hand pressed against his shoulder.

“Somewhere that isn’t here!” She yells. “I need to...I just need to clear my head.”

“Nile,” Andy takes a step toward her. She’s already at the door, her hand wrapped around the knob.

“Don’t!” Nile hisses in her direction points an accusatory finger at her face. “I don’t even know who you are anymore, Andy! I seriously don’t. I don’t know who you are.” She throws open the door and leaves, let’s her feet take her to somewhere that isn’t the hotel.

She walks for so long that she doesn’t notice when she finds herself sitting on a park bench staring into the distance like it’ll offer her some answers.

“The truth is painful to learn when it’s not what we think it’ll be.” Nile scowls, Quynh’s heeled boots coming to a stop in front of her.

She glances up, her eyes narrowing with annoyance she stares at the man in the hideous blue and black striped suit next to Quynh. “You needed to bring your bodyguard to this fight?” She sniffs, “didn’t think you could take me by yourself?”

“Young bravado is so...wonderful,” Quynh hisses, “I’m not here looking for a fight. I’m here to give you a message to pass on to the others.”

“Ok?” Nile cocks a brow at her, “give it then.”

Reaching into the pocket of her coat. Quynh pulls out a business card. It’s black. 3.5 by 2 inches. There’s a single gold shape on the front of it that Nile doesn’t get. It’s neither a logo nor a unique design. “What is this?” She waves the business card after snatching it out of Quynh’s hand.

“As I said before. It’s a message.” Quynh and the man in the suit start to walk away.

“What kind of message?” Nile calls out to her back. Quynh stops, looks at her over her shoulder with a deadly smile that unnerves her.

“To the others.”

“The others?”

“The ones like us.” She continues to walk away.

Nile sits back against the bench. Stares up at the starless and moonless sky.

The others.

There were more immortals out there than they’d realized.


	5. Secrets Unearthed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, this story is wrapped up. It may seem a little short, but I couldn't see myself pushing this story for another chapter. It just felt right to end it here.

The door to the hotel room creaks open. Everyone’s surprised when Nile walks through. “I’m still mad at you,” she announces to Andy, “but I’ve had enough time to realize that the past and future aren’t perfect. Also, I met Quynh again.”

“Jesus, kid,” Booker snorts, “you might wanted to have lead with the last thing first.”

“Where is she?” Andy’s eyes dart to the space behind Nile as if Quynh will come bursting through the door behind her.

“Not here. Long gone,” Nile explains, “though she did show up with one of her buddies. Dude wearing a hideous blue and black suit—”

“What?” Nicky gasps, his fingers tightening around his beer so tightly that it seems like he might crush the glass bottle.

“ _ Nicolo _ ?” Joe looks worried, his lips pressed together.

“I killed him,” Nicky whispers like he doesn’t believe his own words. “I killed him, unless—unless—”

“He’s one of us.” Nile finishes for him. “Yea turns out there’s a lot more of us than we ever realized. Quynh gave me this.” She tosses the business card toward Andy who snatches it, flips it over, and frowns at it.

“Is this it?”

“Yea,” Nile nods, “she said it was a message. Would lead us to the others somehow.”

“Well this is helpful,” Andy grumbles beneath her breath.

“How?” Nicky shakes his head. Eyes wide like saucer cups. “How have we never dreamed of the others before? Have you?” Everyone glances at Andy.

She shakes her head. “I only ever dreamt about Lykon, Quynh, you two—” she gestures to Nicky and Joe, “Book and now Nile...I never...I never thought there were more of us.” She laughs bitterly, “hell, Lykon thought there were only two of us. He was shocked when I showed up with Quynh. He never dreamt of her.”

Nile’s lip curls inward in thought. “Maybe, just maybe there’s a way they were shutting us out. How else could there be more of us but we never saw them in our dreams? I mean, it doesn’t explain how I knew Booker was missing via my dreams or how I saw Quynh drowning in them—”

“Hold on,” Andy holds up her hands, eyes wide. “You saw Quynh drowning in your dreams?” Nile nods. “And you’re just mentioning that now?”

“I didn’t think it was important until now.” Nile points out. “Thought they were just random dreams until I saw Quynh face to face.”

The room falls into silence.

“What do we do now, boss?” Booker asks. All eyes fix themselves upon Andy.

She glances down at the business card in her hand. Stares at the gold embossed face of it runs her thumb over the gold sharped lines. “We look for them.”

Turns out, looking for immortals that you never knew existed until mere moments before was more difficult than anyone thought. The design on the business card lead them to nowhere, they had Copley scan it, run it through thousands of military databases and contacts, and still came up with nothing.

“We’re getting nowhere with this,” Booker growled, pushing the palms of his hands against his eyes. He leaned back in the rickety chair he’d spent the last few hours in, hunched over his laptop.

Andy rubs her temples with the tips of her fingers. A quick hint of a smile worms its way across her face when she takes the ibuprofen and bottle of water that Joe offers her.

Nile glances at the business card. Her mouth pinched tight as she stares at the gold embossed design on it. In the back of her mind, familiarity tickles at her. Like she’s seeing part of the picture instead of the whole.

She takes up the card, stares at the design. The gold lines reach up, crisscross each other at certain intervals that make the whole thing look familiar. Flashes of a tower surrounded by people push itself to the forefront of her mind.

“Could it be the outline of a building?” She glances at Booker, tosses the card onto his lap.

He frowns, but she knows the gears in his brain are whirring at the freshest idea any of them have had in the past several hours.

They rest in turns. Joe and Nicky share one bed and Andy sleeps in the other. She tried to get Nile to rest before her, but Nile was too invigorated with helping Booker search, she shook her head and forced Andy to sleep first. Everyone knew she needed it.

It’s the afternoon by the time they get a breakthrough. Booker manages to find a hotel in Cairo, Egypt that has the same shape as the outline on the business card.

“It’s a start,” Andy says, peering over Booker’s shoulder. 

“A start is better than nothing.” Nile’s counters.

“Everyone pack up your things,” raising her arms above her head, an audible crack comes from Andy’s shoulders. “We’re headed to Cairo.”

  
  


A nearly 17-hour journey later and the team finds themselves scoping out the hotel.

“It seems normal,” Joe remarks, lifting a cup of coffee up to his lips. They’re across the street, in a cafe that sells traditional coffee.

“How many times have we said something is normal only to discover it’s not true on the inside?” Andy smiles, her dark sunglasses keeping the harsh rays of the Egyptian sun out of her eyes.

“What do you want to do?” Nile asks, watching Andy drum her fingers against the table.

“We go in,” Andy’s fingers still against the wood, “scout it out. See if we can find anything useful.”

They enter the hotel. Joe and Nicky are browsing the display case of pamphlets near the entrance. Idly flipping through them while glancing at the hotel staff and guests passing by. Andy is making idle chatter with a couple who’s visiting Cairo for the first time.

Booker and Nile are posing as a couple; Nile is talking to one of the receptionists about the local area. She’s in the middle of asking the receptionist for popular date spots when her spine stiffens at the sound of her name from an unfamiliar mouth.

“Miss Nile Freeman.  _ Monsieur _ Booker.” Nile can feel Booker stiffen, they both turn at the same time, spotting a woman with Carnelian colored skin, dark grey cat-shaped eyes, and dark hair cropped severely that it barely reaches her shoulders. Her hands are clasped behind her back, the dark two-piece suit she wears without a stray wrinkle as if through sheer willpower alone she keeps it looking freshly pressed. She cocks her head to the side, wide grin on her face, eyes narrowed as she stares at Booker. “Or would you prefer I call you  _ Monsieur _ Sebastian Le Livre instead?”

Booker’s face goes as pale as a sheet of paper. This woman knows his name, his actual name that he hasn’t used for so long. Nile’s eyes flicker over to where Andy’s sitting, she glances over, eyebrow arched questioningly as if she knows something is off in the moment. Nile’s fingers curl, her hand starting to lift subtlety, to signal to Andy that they’ve been made somehow when the woman across from her and Booker’s grin grows wider. “I wouldn’t do what you’re about to do, Miss Freeman.” Nile flicks her eyes over to Andy, who’s being approached by a tall, dark-skinned man wearing a dark suit of his own. She finds Joe and Nicky, spots a lighter-skinned woman with her hair pulled back into braids was approaching them.

The woman standing before them, leans slightly, peering around them to the receptionist they were just talking to. “Don’t worry about these two, Eshe. I’ll take care of them.” The woman continues to smile at the two of them. “Follow me, please.” She leads them to a row of golden elevators. She pushes the up button and waits for a few seconds before the doors open with a chime.

She ushers the both of them in and steps in after them. Pulls out a simple black keycard and presses it against the scanner above the panel. The scanner beeps and the elevator doors shut before the whole thing lurches and they’re moving upward.

“Where are we going?” Nile asks.

The woman tosses a smile at her from over her shoulder. “All questions will be answered in due time, Miss Freeman.”

The elevator ride up is silent. Nile is almost grateful for when the doors open again and they’re deposited out to some really cushy lobby that overlooks all of Cairo. “Can I get you two anything?” The woman asks them, “water? Juice? Coffee?”

Nile opens her mouth to say no thanks but is cut off by Booker who requests a coffee. She shoots him a look.

“What?” He shrugs his shoulders unapologetically, “if the bad guys are offering us free drinks, might as well accept it.”

A few minutes later and the rest of the ragtag group of immortals are deposited into the lobby. Booker’s sipping on his coffee as the woman that lead Nile and Booker up offer refreshments to her newest guests.

“No, thanks,” Andy replies, arms crossed in front of her chest. She glances back at the dark-skinned man and the woman with braids. “Mind just cutting to the chase?”

“I suppose,” the woman laughs, motions for her guests to follow her through a door that had been painted black.

She opens it, exposing a luxurious board room. Surrounded by which are people of different ethnicities. There are three empty chairs near the head of the oval table, the dark-skinned man and woman with braids moves to the chairs on either side of the head of the table. The woman who had led Nile and Booker up smiles at them, gestures to some chairs that had been brought in for them, and urges them silently to take a seat.

She then walks around the table, takes her place at the head of it. Now that Nile is getting a good look at the occupants of the table, she feels a sense of nostalgia tickling the back of her mind. Like she’s seen some of the faces here before. She pushes the thoughts away as the woman at the head of the table speaks.

“I’m sure, you all have questions that you wish for us to answer.”

“Oh, we have a lot,” Andy says curtly, only making the woman smile.

“And they will be answered in time,” the dark-skinned man chimes up, “Andromache of Scythia—” Andy tenses, “Nicolo di Genova—” Nicky frowns, “Yusuf Al-Kaysani.” Joe’s fingers twitch.

“She did that to me and Booker too,” Nile mutters to her makeshift family.

“How do you know our name?” Andy’s fingers twitch like she’s itching to unzip the guitar bag she had placed on the floor that contains their weapons. 

“We know  _ everything _ about you.” The woman smiles. “Your names, where you were born.  _ Everything _ . But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, I’m Krisha.” She gestures to the dark-skinned man, “this is Anpu.” She gestures to the woman on her left, “and this is Caly.”

Nile glances at each face around the table, as Andy speaks up. “Let me guess, you’re the other immortals we never knew existed? If so, where’s Quynh.”

Krisha laughs, places a hand against her throat, and for a brief second Nile thinks about how fitting this group of companions is for Quynh.

“Quynh has...other things to deal with and unfortunately couldn’t join us today.”

Nile suddenly realizes what it is she should be remembering. “I’ve seen you all in my dreams before.”

Andy looks at Nile like she should have mentioned this before they strode into the hotel.

Krisha laughs. It’s laughter that comes from deep inside of the belly. “Dreams are a way we immortals connect with each other. A way for us to see things of great importance that we don’t yet realize.”

Nile thinks about the large tower she saw in her first dream. Feels like it’s important in a way she doesn’t yet realize.

“The tower of Babel,” Anpu seems to have read her thoughts. His voice is rich, deep in a way like watching bourbon being poured over ice.

She sees Andy’s mouth fall open, sees the way Nicky’s brows pinch together in confusion.

“Are you saying—?” Andy starts only to be stopped by a nod of Krisha’s head.

“How old are you?” Nile whispers.

“Old,” Anpu responds.

“How. Old?”

“ _ Old _ ,” there’s a chill to Caly’s words that has Nile clamping her lips shut.

“Caly be kind,” Krisha smiles, “they don’t know everything  _ yet _ . We are old, Nile, old enough that most of us here watched when Babel rose and when it fell. Old enough that we were there when the Wandering Jew was cursed to walk the earth forever. Or well,” Krisha’s smile slips, “when he and others were forced to walk this earth.”

Cold fingers brush against Nile’s spine. Nicky looks pale, takes in a breath, and then asks. “So you’re saying our immortality is a curse from God?”

“Would it make you feel better if I said yes?” Krisha’s lip curls. “But the answer to that is yes and no; there is a small grain of truth in some stories and mostly lies in others. Whether you want to view immortality as a curse or a gift is up to you.”

“So what is the truth?” Joe counters.

Krisha taps her fingers against the smooth wood of the oval table. “The truth? The truth is that what we have—” she gestures to the table, “—is a gift that was bestowed upon us. A gift that we decided to share with others.”

The room feels cold as Andy grits her teeth and asks, “How?”

Anpu smiles, “You won’t know how to find it if you look.” He steeples his fingers together, “I’m sure some of you have, ah, been in situations where you’ve been poked and prodded in the name of science.” No one says anything, “it’s our blood. It’s special in ways that none of you can even begin to comprehend.”

Andy’s eyes narrow. “What are you saying?”

Caly laces her fingers together, smile disarming it a way that it lulls you into a sense of false security. “We’ve scoured the battlefields through countless ages. Looking for those that we deemed worthy to become one of us.”

Nile draws in a sharp breath. “You’re saying you what? Turned us? Like this is some damn vampire novel?”

“If you want to call it that then yes.” Krisha smiles at her, “it’s simple really. Just a little drop of blood in the mouth after you die and—” she shrugs, “—you never have to worry about getting old again.”

“That doesn’t explain the fact that we’re not truly immortal,” Andy spits, “what about the others that have died?”

“Lykon was an unfortunate case,” Anpu’s deep voice rumbles, “our gift comes with certain  _ caveats _ . He simply lost the will to live and well, his immortality ran out.”

“So you’re saying as long as we want to live then we’ll continue to be immortal?” Nile’s lips pucker into a frown.

“That’s how this works.” Krisha answers.

“Why are we here?” Andy asks brusquely, “and I know it wasn’t for a peachy presentation on our lack of aging.”

The whole board room erupts with laughter. “I like your spirit Andy,” Krisha points at her, waves her hands in a sweeping motion at the table before her. “Let’s just say we wanted to offer you all a proposition.”

“A proposition?” Booker’s eyes narrow.

“Yes,” Krisha dips her head into a nod, “we all run, ah, have our hands in certain businesses.”

“Let me guess,” Andy hisses, “it doesn’t happen to be involved with the black market does it?”

The silence coming from Krisha and the rest of the board room is enough to confirm their answers.

“We’ve been around for a long time, Andy,” Krisha continues to smile, “far longer than you have. I’m sure you’ve seen humanity’s growth, seen its downfalls, seen that even with an inch toward change there’s always a leap backward.”

“Oh, spare me the speech that Quynh already gave me.” Andy spits, she watches Krisha’s eyes narrow in annoyance.

“Fine,” she hums, “haven’t you all ever wondered what it’s like to change the world directly instead of waiting for a pay off a generation or two down the line? No more, rescuing orphaned kids and hoping one of them wins a Nobel prize in the future. No more hoping that humanity will do what’s right and clean itself up. Why not just influence it directly?”

A weight seems to settle down in the room. Disgust is visible on Nile’s face as she asks. “What ways are you talking about?”

Krisha taps her chin with a finger, “oh just small ways. Nationwide access to birth control, monitoring citizens, reeducation camps—”

A bark of laughter escapes Andy’s lips, causing all eyes to turn upon her. “You basically want a nanny state? A dictatorship; the same shit we’ve been fighting against century after century.”

“Well,” Caly smiles, “all of those nations get their ideas from somewhere.”

Nile sees Andy’s fingers curl inward to her palm. “No thanks,” she hisses, “we’ll have to decline your offer.”

“Stew on it,” Krisha smiles, “think over what we’ve offered today and come back tomorrow.”

Andy and her team get up, leave the room, and head for the elevators. The gold doors shut before them and the ride down is silent for the most part until Nile speaks up. “So that was...disturbing.”

“I don’t think disturbing is the right word for this situation.” Joe’s skin is pale like he’ll throw up at the mere drop of a pin.

Andy drums her fingers against the thigh of her jeans. She looks like she’s thinking something over and Nile wants to ask her what their plan is until she sees a smile stretch across the Eurasian warriors face. “Head back to the hotel without me guys. I have some shopping I need to do first.”

It turns out, much later, that by shopping Andy had meant picking up several gallons of gasoline.

“Quynh always said there was a first time for everything.” Andy smiles, hands pressed against her hips, “why not try it now?”

“So you want to burn them alive?” Nile cocks a brow at her.

“No,” there’s a small chill to Andy’s words. “Kill them, then burn them, and then scatter their ashes to the wind.” 

Smoke curls out of the hotel lobby as guests rush to escape. A group of foreigners makes their way out through the smoke, sunglasses, and caps making their appearance forgettable to the eyewitnesses who’ll be interviewed later.

The group makes their way down a darkened alley of Cairo and is about to slip out onto a packed main street when the leader of the group stops.

“Quynh.” Andy stares at the Asian woman, perched atop a stack of crates.

She slips off of them, her eyes staring at Andy before flickering to the large plume of smoke and fire behind them. “I always said that there was a first time for everything, Andromache.”

“You did.” Andy tips her head, “upset with me for killing your friends?”

“They were never my friends,” Quynh snaps back, “their opinions on some matters were  _ disturbing _ even to me.”

Andy’s fingers twitch as if they’re itching to pull her axe out. “So how are we going to do this? End it here now once and for all or should we schedule this for another time?”

“No,” Quynh shakes her head, “I just came to see your handiwork, Andromache. I’m not going to fight you. We may  _ disagree  _ on certain things now, my love. But I don’t think you have it in your heart to try and kill me...and I don’t have it in mine to try and kill you either.”

Andy is taken aback by that. “What are you saying?”

Quynh smiles closes the gap between her and Andy to plant a kiss upon her lips. “Continue living, Andromache. I’ll see you around.”

With that said, Quynh slips away. The alley is silent once more, only to be broken up by Nile’s words. “Has anyone told you that your girlfriend is crazy?”

She yelps with laughter when Andy punches her in the arm. The group walks out of the alley, a week later and it’s printed in Egyptian newspapers that the entire board group of a chain of luxury hotels is missing and their whereabouts are unknown. The news with so many things going on every day fades into obscurity until it’s a distant memory in people’s minds.


End file.
